ABSTRACT
It is internationally acknowledged that good governance in the area of disaster risk reduction and management is the primary responsibility of states. However, there is also a need to engage with international actors and donors to increase resilience (Howe and Bang 2017, pp. 60–61). In the case of the Philippines, foreign and international agencies played an important role in the Typhoon Yolanda response efforts. Oxfam described immediate assistance provided by foreign governments ‘to be far more generous than the usual’ (Co et al. 2016, p. 13) ‘when compared with the numerous other humanitarian crises that struggled for international attention’ or ‘many countries have given far more than their “fair share” of the total (relative to their Gross National Income)’ (Chughtai 2013, p. 7). In the third week after Yolanda struck, US$391 million in humanitarian assistance was received from the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, Canada and other international donors (ibid., p. 7). The United Nations designated its Yolanda disaster response as Level 3 (L3) or its highest classification with a UN emergency response team reaching Tacloban within 12 hours of the super-typhoon striking land, working immediately with various aid sectors or clusters (to be expounded later) in areas such as water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and protection (which includes child protection).
